United States vs Jones (Unwarranted GPS tracking of an individual)

I touched on this decision in Quick Thoughts as a victory for the Fourth Amendment (Fourth Amendment Victory (Quick Thoughts) in regards to unwarranted GPS tracking of an individual. Now I want to dive a little bit deeper into it, in regards to the Founding influences and how they were applied to this case. You can read the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) opinion and additional concurrence opinions here¹ (Cornell University Law School).

The Supreme Court's opinion was written by Justice Scalia and is the main one of focus here. Additional concurrence opinions were also written by Justices Sotomayor and Alito who had differing reasons based on precedent however, reaching the same conclusion.

Synopsis

The Government obtained a search warrant permitting it to install a Global-Positioning-System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle registered to respondent Jones’s wife. The warrant authorized installation in the District of Columbia and within 10 days, but agents installed the device on the 11th day and in Maryland. The Government than tracked the vehicle’s movements for 28 days. It subsequently secured an indictment of Jones and others on drug trafficking conspiracy charges. The District Court suppressed the GPS data obtained while the vehicle was parked at Jones’s residence, but held the remaining data admissible because Jones had no reasonable expectation of privacy when the vehicle was on public streets. Jones was convicted. The D. C. Circuit reversed, concluding that admission of the evidence obtained by warrantless use of the GPS device violated the Fourth Amendment. (sic from SCOTUS ruling)

Fourth Amendment Victory (Quick Thoughts)

Today the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rules law enforcement agencies may not track your privately owned vehicle with a GPS device, unless authorized by a warrant. The decision was unanimous and correct. For starters the Fourth Amendment was designed as a method to prevent the government from intruding into the private matters or property of individuals or groups unless proper cause could be justified BEFORE hand in a warrant, not the other way around.

To often the Bill of Rights has been viewed as the limit of individual or group rights, defining the limit up to what government can do, but it was not designed to do this. The Bill of Rights was designed to specifically prohibit certain actions to further limit what government may do. The Federal Government was bound by certain limits in the Constitution, and a strong argument against the Bill of Rights was that it may end up expanding Government powers, by claiming what was not specifically protected, such as this case. (see Bill of Rights or limitations).

Even though the exact specification of tracking citizens is not specifically prohibited by name in the Fourth Amendment, the concept of it being prohibited is. A person or group CAN NOT be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects if every move that person or possession is tracked. You vehicle is your effect, and you are guaranteed to be secure in it from unwarranted searches or seizures. By monitoring its every move in such a manner it is to make the effect and person unsecure from the government, effectively a search of the effect and person.

Not only is government prohibited from warrantless searches and seizures specifically in the Fourth Amendment, but this also has Ninth Amendment implications as well, that to be free from government monitoring is one of the "other rights retained by the people". This Amendment was designed to prevent such a move by the government that usurps the intention and motivation of the Bill of Rights, to protect every right retained by all people not just those specifically cited in the previous eight Amendments.

Were the Founders Originalist?

Were the Founding Fathers originalist, this is a question I get more often than most others, along with, “Were did Originalism come from?” or “Which Founder was an Originalist?”. The first thing that needs to be discussed is, what Originalism is. Justice Antonin Scalia describes it here in remarks to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., on March 14, 2005 (What is Originalism and Original Meaning?). In his remarks Justice Scalia says the following:

Our manner of interpreting the Constitution is to begin with the text, and to give that text the meaning that it bore when it was adopted by the people.

He does not contend to be a “strict constructionist” and goes on to state, that he does not believe anybody should be. An Originalist is one who believes the meaning of the Law is what it was understood to be by those who adopted it, the people who ratified the provision in question. It is this group of people, whether in the Convention of the States in 1787-1789 on the Constitution, or the various bodies who ratified the 27 Amendments to the Constitution, that granted the permission to give power to government. Only the people and these bodies can cede power, it cannot be arbitrarily taken, and because only they can cede the power it must be understood, what power they in fact meant to cede to government, the Original Meaning of the provision in question. To sum up the basic foundation of an Originalist is, I put this way,

For all Originalist the basic beliefs are that the Constitution is the Authority in which the government operates, and is done by the consent of the People, and the people expect it to be followed. It is a binding contract of conduct between the legitimate power [the people] and the acting power [the government], as in all contracts it defines what the limits of it are.

Originalism and its different types

Originalism is more than just one type of interpretation or Jurisprudence in regards to the Constitution. There are three main types of Originalists, Original Intent, Original Meaning, and Constructionist [textualist]. All of do have common threads, with perhaps the most important one being, the Constitution is a document of limits on the Government and is designed to protect the “inalienable rights” [Natural Rights according to Locke and Montesquieu], and it is the Judges and Justices job to determine what Law is, not what Law should be.  The methods of determining what Law is is done differently depending on the type of Originalist one may be.

What law should be to an Originalist is a function of the Legislature, it is the job of the Courts to determine how it is applied in Justice, what was the intent of Congress in the law, and whether it abides by the confines of the Constitution, WHAT LAW IS not if it is what some or that Judge or Justice would want the law to be. To an Originalist, Judges are to act only as “Umpires” to law, not judge if a law is moral or if the law is outdated, they believe morality of law is a function of the Legislature and if it is outdated, that is also the domain of the Legislature to repeal it, not the Judicial Branch to negate it, provided the law abides by the confines of the Constitution.

What is Originalism and Original Meaning

Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the following remarks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., on March 14, 2005.
 

Justice Antonin Scalia

JUSTICE SCALIA: It’s a pizzazzy topic: Constitutional Interpretation. It is however an important one. I was vividly reminded how important it was last week when the Court came out with a controversial decision in the Roper case. And I watched one television commentary on the case in which the host had one person defending the opinion on the ground that people should not be subjected to capital punishment for crimes they commit when they are younger than eighteen, and the other person attacked the opinion on the ground that a jury should be able to decide that a person, despite the fact he was under eighteen, given the crime, given the person involved, should be subjected to capital punishment.